Craig Eubank stood in an alley off Magnolia Street early on a Thursday morning in September, looking at a 50-ton house suspended four feet in the air.
He watched a crawler dozer tug the cream and blue-trimmed, 100-plus-year-old Victorian-style house he and his wife, Shannon, had purchased for $1, several feet by several feet, toward what would be its new resting place: the backyard of a rental house the Eubanks own.
The 1890s home at 1316 High St. was scheduled for demolition for an eight-unit development earlier this year, but after good connections, opportune timing and a recent change to the city’s accessory dwelling unit (ADU) rules, the Eubanks purchased the house for less than the price of a McDonald’s black coffee, and moved it just a few properties over. By doing so, they preserved the two units of housing the Victorian home provides in downtown Bellingham.
Emy Scherrer, a city planner and the coordinator of the city’s Historic Preservation Program, said she thinks this move may be the first of its kind: a historic home being relocated to a new property under the city’s Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) rules.
“This wouldn’t have been allowed to happen under [old] ADU regulations,” she said. ADU rules updated last summer allow for eligible properties to have one single-family home and two ADUs — each ADU limited to 1,000 square feet, and no higher than 24 feet. The 1316 High St. home just fits those criteria.
Scherrer said ADU rules are a lot more flexible now, which “allows these kinds of creative projects” to happen in Bellingham.
Cynthia and Troy Bach owned the High Street property and house, and had previously rented it to tenants. Cynthia Bach said she connected with the Eubanks through AVT Consulting, who was working with both parties, and they agreed to the plan.
“We kind of feel it’s a win-win, all the way around,” Bach said, as they saved on all removal, abatement and disposal costs.
The whole process will cost the Eubanks somewhere around $300,000, Shannon Eubank said. Given housing prices in Bellingham, the couple consider it a great deal.
The move took longer and was more complex than the Eubanks had originally bargained for: navigating permits, neighbor relations and Puget Sound Energy coordination created moments where they thought the move might not happen.
But in the end, on Sept. 12, the Eubanks climbed up a small ladder into the house — still suspended as they wait to construct a new foundation — safely on their Magnolia Street property behind their current rental house. Shannon Eubank said it felt “surreal” and “like a dream come true.”
Why move a house?
Only a few houses are moved in Bellingham every year.
For the Eubanks, their main drive was to preserve a historic home. While the High Street house isn’t technically registered as historic, the couple appreciated the architecture, character and old-growth wood used to construct the house.
Whatcom County Historian Jeff Jewell called the house the “Robert and Mary Oberlatz House.” Robert was a tailor, and Mary was a seamstress, he said in an email, and lived there starting sometime in the 1890s.
Craig Eubank said he loves all the “charm and the character” that old houses give neighborhoods in Bellingham.
“This is a fairly busy little area downtown here, and so to maintain that charm and history, it’s really important,” he said.
There are environmental reasons to move a house, too. Not only are houses expensive to demolish — Cynthia Bach estimated that demolishing the house would have cost them between $25,000 to $30,000 — a lot of the remnants of a house end up in a landfill.
“This is the epitome of recycling,” said Josh Edelstein of Whatcom House Movers, who moved the home. “[They’re] saving this [house] versus getting munched up with an excavator and loaded and taken and put into a landfill.”
Scherrer agreed: Moving a house is “100 times better for carbon emissions than doing a new LEED-certified building,” she said.
A house move is not as simple as just picking a house and moving it, though. It must be in decent condition and a good candidate for a move.
“If you can, and the stars align right, then you can get a house for really cheap and it’s a great win for everybody,” said Darin MacGillivray, the city’s building plans examiner.
Dave Edelstein of Whatcom House Movers has been moving and lifting houses since 1982. His son, Josh, has been involved in house moves since he was a kid.
About a week before the move, Josh stood in front of the house, jacked up about four feet in the air, with dollies inserted under the structure to allow it to roll. To move it, the team towed the building up the hill toward the back of the property, rotated it 90 degrees, and slid it into place across the backyard of a neighboring property.
The challenge in this house move was the tightness of the lots, Josh Edelstein said. But these kinds of moves are never impossible, “short of defying the laws of physics,” he said.
House moving has changed in the 40 years since Edelstein started the business. Because there are fewer lots, they are more often lifting houses to rebuild foundations and placing them back where they started, rather than moving houses to new properties. But the new ADU rule change could start a trend.
“The ADU rule, I have a feeling, is going to play a big role in people’s thoughts to move houses,” Josh Edelstein said. He said the city should consider reducing building permit costs for houses that are being moved, to incentivize people.
Scherrer said she’d like to create a public list of homes slated for demolition that are available to move. Currently, people demolishing homes that are “seen as eligible for historic listing” are required to list the house as available to move prior to demolition, as part of the SEPA environmental processes. Often, people just post on Craiglist, Scherrer said. But that can leave out other “architecturally significant” houses, Scherrer said.
‘The people part of it’
On the day of the house move, nearly everyone involved in the project showed up. Neighbors, tenants, Cynthia Bach and curious people walking by stopped to watch the spectacle of a house rolling through a backyard in downtown Bellingham.
Karen Kohler, who was born in the 1316 High St. house in 1956 and lived there until 1978 when she got married, also attended.
She and her husband, Dave, met at Bellingham High School and now live in Bothell, but came up specifically for the move. They said they stop by the house every time they come to Bellingham. When they saw the house was slated for demolition, Karen Kohler was devastated. But the next time they came to town, the house was still standing, and they heard from neighbors it was to be moved. They then connected with the Eubanks.
“I was so very grateful,” Karen Kohler said of the preservation of her mother’s old house. “I was very, very happy.”
When the house was moved into its final place on that Thursday afternoon, the Kohlers climbed into the house and walked around as the Eubanks asked them questions about how things in the house came to be.
Karen Kohler walked around, tears streaming, pointing out where her mother’s chair used to sit, and where she used to sit, right across from her. She rushed to a back room, chattering about how she used to pluck chickens in the pantry.
Shannon Eubank said she was so grateful for the support of the city in this work, and the ways the move brought so many people together.
“I love all the people part of it and the people stories, and all the support,” she said.
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
